Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion
Reading 1 IS 52:13—53:12
Responsorial Psalm PS 31:2, 6, 12-13, 15-16, 17, 25
R. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
Reading 2 HEB 4:14-16; 5:7-9
Verse Before The Gospel PHIL 2:8-9
Christ became obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name which is above every other name.
Gospel JN 18:1—19:42
Homily for KDTH on Good Friday 4/10/2020
Hey everyone, it’s Fr. Andy here at Nativity, would like to offer you my homily for Good Friday. It assumes you have read John’s Gospel account of the passion.
Last night I was praying the rosary, meditating on the sorrowful mysteries, and it struck me just how much Jesus went through in such a short period of time.
For example, in the Gospel we just heard, the scourging at the pillar only receives one small sentence, “Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged.”
We could spend a lot of time meditating on that one sentence: the situation, the characters, the meaning, all of it, all of it, I could probably preach a whole homily just on that, but this whole story, the entire Passion of Christ is just like that, in every detail.
But, what it comes down to is the cross. Take a look at a crucifix, hopefully you have one close by, on a wall, or on a rosary.
Now think of Jesus, innocent, without sin, giving everything He had to give, from the very clothes on His back to His last drops of blood and water in His body, and recognize He gave this total gift of Himself, for you.
When He was going through that scourging and everything else, He was thinking of you, and He would have done it just for you, that is how strong His love is for you personally, in order to save you from your sins and allow you to enter Heaven to be with Him for eternity.
And our response should be one of gratitude, of course, but the cross is also an invitation. The cross is an invitation which requires another response, inviting us to respond with a total gift of our self.
We all have crosses in our life. Sometimes we choose our crosses, such as our lenten penances. But often our crosses choose us, like this pandemic. Jesus didn’t choose His cross either...
But is a cross really a cross if we choose it?
None of us are free from suffering. Jesus came to save us from the bonds of death, and in His great wisdom He did that through suffering.
Our choice is how we respond. So choose to take up your cross, embrace it, and respond with a total gift of yourself to God. Jesus loves us and is with us to carry our crosses, we are not alone as we carry our cross.
He’s done the hard work already, and remember: This is an invitation. You don’t have to embrace your cross as Jesus embraced His, but this is what you were made for. Choose Christ.
Thanks for listening, may God continue to bless you.